


no grave can hold my body down (i'll crawl home)

by thepensword



Series: like real people do (and other monstrosities) [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Platonic Relationships, Spoilers through Season 4, but its ambiguous because its not the focus, there's also heavily implied basira/daisy because i'm a big lesbian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:53:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21830026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepensword/pseuds/thepensword
Summary: Two facts about Jonathan Sims:She was going to kill him, and now she is not.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims & Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Series: like real people do (and other monstrosities) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1586599
Comments: 34
Kudos: 465





	no grave can hold my body down (i'll crawl home)

**Author's Note:**

> tma gave me so much good gay content but true to form my first fic for it is found family bs because idk I'm Like That. daisy and jon are wlw/mlm solidarity and i'll fight you on that. enjoy.
> 
> there is now fanart for this fic! please go check out [this wonderful art](https://gravebranches.tumblr.com/post/189775560786/no-grave-can-hold-my-body-down-based-on) by [gravebranches](https://gravebranches.tumblr.com) on tumblr
> 
> Warning(s): suffocation, bloodlust, murder, depictions of panic attacks and nightmares, disassociation/feelings of unreality, identity issues (specifically relating to relationship with personal humanity)

She was going to kill him, at first.

It wasn’t murder. She was very good at convincing herself it wasn’t murder. It was just...pest control. Kill a monster, hopefully save some lives. Calm the shrieking song of her blood. The roaring in her ears. The feral snarls of the beast that sat where her heart should be. Maybe help the hunger, for a bit.

These days, bloodlust and hunger were, for the most part, all that she felt and all that she was. It was different, with Basira, but...but it was only Basira, set against a world full of monsters, and love is a weak antidote when the poison snarls so loudly. Maybe she was becoming one of those monsters she tried to convince herself she didn’t _love_ killing.

She tried not to think about it.

The point was, she was going to kill him at first. Got most of the way there, too, and then—and then Basira. Because of course, of _course_. So she stopped, and she waited. After the Unknowing, she told herself. One monster, then the next. One thing at a time. Lying in bed at night with her eyes open, watching the ceiling and thinking about how good it would taste when the air was filled with the scent of his blood. Basira’s fingers wrapped in hers, warm and soft and...not knowing. Not all of it. She wondered if Basira knew more than she let on. She suspected so. Don’t think about it. Don’t—

She was going to kill him. Planned it. Hungered for it. She tried to practice it in her dreams, a few times, but she always woke up before his blood could spill.

She hated him for that.

But then—

* * *

There is a reason bodies are buried after they die. Well—there are a number of reasons, but one in particular is the smell. It’s hard to smell a corpse rotting under six feet of dirt. Hard to get a proper wiff of the blood and the rot and the decay.

Daisy woke up a lot deeper than six feet under, and her head was clearer than it had been in...she couldn’t remember. She felt weak. Naked. Helpless. She felt...god, she felt young, like the years of her life had been stripped away with the rush of blood in her ears and all that was left was the little girl whose best friend had turned into a Thing and tried to kill her. And...and she couldn’t breathe, and she couldn’t move, and—

It’s hard to tell time when you’re choking on dirt. She was not new to panic—between old trauma and new, she woke up from nightmares more often than not with her chest heaving for air that she couldn’t quite seem to inhale properly and her hands shaking and—she knew panic. She knew. And she knew that time fades away, when you’re like that.

There was no calming down, in the Buried. If she grew numb, if she gave up, if she started to resign herself to her fate, the walls pressed tighter and the air...the air...well, it turned to dust, didn’t it? It all turned to dust inside her lungs and she couldn’t breathe and she couldn’t...she couldn’t…

She was never going to see Basira again. 

And then—

_“Daisy!”_

* * *

Two facts about Jonathan Sims:

She was going to kill him, and now she was not.

And a third: 

He saved her. He ripped out his own rib, and he climbed into the coffin to bring her home.

* * *

In the dark, they could not see. They couldn’t feel anything but the stone and the dust and the terror. But he reached for her, clammy fingers shaking and straining, and he pulled her close. He held her hand tight in his like Basira used to, and for the first time in a long time she started to remember who she was. Where she was. That was her hand: five fingers. Long, slender. There was a scar on her thumb, right underneath the knuckle, from where she’d fumbled a knife. She’d been trying to flip it. Basira had laughed at her, when she found out.

God, how she wanted to make Basira laugh again.

In, out. The air was dusty in her lungs, but it was air. She had lungs. She had a ribcage to hold those lungs. There was a heart in there, somewhere, pumping blood through her veins, though the silence of it was deafening. She was Daisy Tonner. He was holding her hand (she had hands) and breathing loud and scared near her ear (she had ears) and. She almost thought she could see his eyes, when he Asked. And she hated those eyes, those eyes that watched her from her dreams and Knew too much and stripped her bare like bones between teeth and—

And she was glad, to know they were Watching her now. Because he was there, and that meant she existed. There was life beyond the Buried. And he’d come for her, and they were stuck but he’d escaped this kind of thing before, and—

And she trusted him. Funny, that. She didn’t think she still had it in her to trust.

* * *

Three facts about Jonathan Sims:

She was going to kill him, and now she was not. And she trusted him.

And a fourth:

They were going to get out of this.

* * *

( _“Hi.”_

 _“Oh my god.”_ )

* * *

“Can I sit here?” said Daisy, and pointed into the corner. Jon looked up, hungry and surprised, and moved by impulse she reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. He sagged, at that, like maybe he hadn’t been touched in a while and maybe her hand was reminding him he existed. She understood that. (She left her hand there for longer than strictly necessary.)

“Er. Yes,” said Jon. “Of—of course, Daisy. Of course.”

This wasn’t the first time. Except this time, when he finished recording, she moved her chair beside his and leaned her head against his shoulder and took his hand, lacing their fingers together on the desktop.

Jon sighed like the end of the world and squeezed back.

And they were monsters, is the thing. Neither of them was really human anymore. But maybe...maybe they could be inhuman together. Maybe if they did that, they could help each other remember what being human was like.

* * *

She still dreamt.

In many ways, it was worse than before. Before, the coffin gaped open, taunting her, but her mind didn’t have the point of reference to take it into much further detail. Now, though, she dreamt of the Choking, and the Buried, and the fear. She dreamt of Calvin laughing as her vision blacked out. She dreamt of never waking up, or worse—waking up back in the coffin.

And she dreamt of Jon. Still there, Watching, with those stupid, sad, Knowing eyes. Except now she wasn’t angry, and now she didn’t lunge for him. Instead, she would look up from the blackness and the crushing suffocation and she would almost smile, feeling his hand reaching out for hers, hearing his voice in the darkness so loudly and so clearly that it drowned out the rushing blood. The dreams were darker, and scarier, but Jon was there. Jon was there, and that meant he would always come for her, and she would always dig herself out.

After particularly bad nights, she’d find him. She’d walk into his office and pull her chair up beside his, and he’d hold out his hand for hers without needing to ask. He always Knew. He always knew. She liked that.

* * *

A number of things about Jonathan Sims, ex-human, ex-target, now-friend(?):

She was going to kill him, and now she was not. And she trusted him. And he came for her. And he was a monster, but so was she, and no one else could ever really know what that was like, but at least they had each other. At least she had his hand in hers, grounding her, reminding her who she was. Daisy Tonner, ex-cop, ex-human, now…

And a final thing:

Things were better. She still dreamt of the dirt and that was bad, and she still heard the blood and that was worse, but he was in her dreams and beside her in his office and it was better. Not perfect, not fixed, but better.

And maybe that was enough. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> *ugly sobbing* i just...love them....god....
> 
> also full disclosure i just had my first semester of college and i haven't written shit since i started so if this is bad, sorry! i'm rusty.
> 
> come cry with me on [tumblr](https://thepensword.tumblr.com) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/thepensw0rd)


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